Noordegraaf, J.

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On Sweet on Horne Tooke. A few remarks

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1The Henry Sweet Society Bulletin 41 (November 2003), 14-17
Jan Noordegraaf
On Sweet on Horne Tooke – 
A few remarks
In an article published in a recent issue of the Bulletin, Therese Lindström showed that Henry
Sweet (1845-1912) makes an interesting case for those who are interested in the history of the
treatment of ‘grammaticalisation’ in Britain. As it appears, the distinguished name giver of our
Society made a distinction between ‘full words’ and ‘form words’, i.e., between content words
and function words, respectively. Lindström (2003: 11) rightly observed that “[s]everal times
Sweet mentions that autonomous words can develop into function words – and he claims that
this was a generally acknowledged process of change at the end of the nineteenth century, in
other words taking no credit for having discovered this himself but instead emphasising that it is
generally accepted – a comment which is important for us today in the study of
grammaticalisation”. To the interested reader who might wish to know when this concept was
first introduced into linguistics, I would like to point to some data which could be taken into
consideration when writing the history of the phenomenon. 
When expatiating on the subject in his History of Language (1900) Sweet made a
historiographical remark which I will quote in full:
The older school of philologists regarded form-words as arbitrary inventions made for
the express purpose of showing grammatical relations. One of the earliest and most
energetic opponents of this view was our countryman Horne Took [sic], whose
Diversions of Purley, first published about 1770, is an attempt to show that even
prepositions and conjunctions once had a definite independent meaning, and are
simply worn-down forms of full-words – a view which is now generally accepted.
(Sweet 1920: 43 = Lindström 2003: 12)
According to the standard literature, the Diversions appeared only in 1786 (cf. Robins 1996: 926).
Evidently, nobody seems to have told Henry Sweet that he had been a bit sloppy concerning the
year of publication; the phrase “about 1770” can still be found in the last edition of his History of
Language (1930; cf. Lindström 2003: 12).  
More intriguing, however, is Sweet’s assertion that “our countryman” was “one of the earliest
[...] to show that even prepositions and conjunctions once had a definite independent meaning,
and are simply worn-down forms of full-words”. This view of John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)
as an original theorist, however, had been challenged as early as 1790 in a critique of the first
edition of the Diversions, viz. in Cassander’s Criticisms on the Diversions of [15] Purley, a booklet
written in 1787 and published in 1790 (cf. Funke 1934: 156 n.1; Aarsleff 1967: 61-62 n.37). 
Cassander was the pseudonym of the Dutchman Johannes Bruckner (1726-1804), who had
been born in the village of Cadzand in Zeeland, one of the provinces of the Dutch Republic.
According to the Album Studiosorum of Franeker University, he enrolled as Jean Bruckner on 1
November 1742. At Franeker, a small town in the province of Friesland, Bruckner studied
theology. He appears to have moved on to Leiden where he obtained a pastorship and where he
associated with distinguished scholars such as the classicist Tiberius Hemsterhuis (1685-1766),
“the greatest Greek scholar of his time” (Monboddo), and the Orientalist Albert Schultens
      The year 1737 saw the publication of Schultens’s Hebrew grammar, the Institutiones ad fundamenta1
linguae hebraeae, which brought him European fame. It has been claimed that Schultens’s ideas on the
relationships between various Semitic languages inspired Sir William Jones (1746-1794) in developing his
own views: Jones’s “eyes were opened to see a similar relation between the Indo-European languages”
(Fellman 1978: 52). I think one can hardly doubt that a scholar of Jones’s stature was acquainted with
Schultens’s works. Moreover, he knew Schultens’s grandson very well, for Hendrik Albert Schultens
(1749-1793), the third member of the ‘Schultens dynasty’ and himself an Arabist and Orientalist of note,
had studied at Oxford and Cambridge in 1772, and had held a chair at Leiden from 1779 onwards.  
      Just one salient example: Betaal (the imperative of betalen, to pay) “is a very common word among the2
Dutch; it is generally the first word one hears when one lands any where in their country [...]” (Bruckner
1790: 67). 
       In an article on “Language” in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.3
2
(1686-1750).  A gifted linguist – it is said that he could deliver a sermon both in Dutch, Latin,1
French, and English – , Bruckner became the much-esteemed minister of the Walloon or
French Church at Norwich in 1753, later also of the local Dutch Church, being the last regular
minister of either church. 
In his Criticisms Bruckner showed himself well-acquainted with the writings of the “very
learned [Albert] Schultens” who “endeavours every where to banish from the theory of
languages all notions of mystery, all kinds of anomalies [...]” (Cassander 1790: 16-17). Using
material from Dutch  and Frisian he revealed a number of mistakes in Tooke, who had been2
“meddling” with words he did not really know – “let me prevail upon you not to be too free
with the Dutch”, was Bruckner’s advice (1790: 74).   
A major thrust of Bruckner’s attack, however, lies in the denial of the originality of Tooke's
thesis concerning prepositions and conjunctions. Bruckner, steeped in Hemsterhusian and
Schultensian doctrines, did not hesitate to put it in plain words: 
Professor Schultens was the first philologist who suspected prepositions, conjunctions,
particles in general to be no more than nouns and verbs, and refused therefore to make
separate classes of them, among those that comprehend the parts of speech. But he
confined himself in the application of this truth to the learned languages. You are the first
who applied it to those which are called modern. It would be wrong not to acknowledge, that
in this you have rendered the literary world an [16] important service. For though you
have not been allowed to proceed far in this career without frequent mistakes, yet your
progress through it has been sufficiently marked with success to put others upon
making some further discoveries (Bruckner 1790: 78-79; emphasis added).  
Tooke was definitely not amused. As he saw it, Bruckner’s essay contained many a “willful
falsehood”. Quoting extensively from Schultens’s work Tooke, “a natural rebel” (Robins 1969:
155), sought to invalidate Bruckner’s interpretation of Schultens’s work (Tooke 1840: 82 sqq.,
129 sqq.). 
Aarsleff (1967: 61 n.37) concedes that Tooke might well have been influenced by Schultens,
although he emphasizes “that the differences are too many to involve simple influence”.
Without going further into the matter he referred to another author, James Bonar, who
maintained  that as far as Tooke’s derivation of the particles was concerned, Tooke was “not the3
first who struck into that path, similar views having previously been entertained, though
       Note that the classical scholar Johannes Daniel van Lennep (1724-1771) was a fellow-student of4
Bruckner’s at Franeker. It was argued by Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) that “[a]ll that is true in his [sc.
Tooke’s] book is taken from Lennep, who gave it so much as it was worth, and pretended not to make a
system of it” (7 May 1830; Coleridge 1990: 118). Aarsleff (1967: 61) deems this view to be “hardly
correct”, arguing that “the main statement of van Lennep’s doctrine” was published only in 1790 by
Everardus Scheidius. However, as I have been able to establish, van Lennep’s book on ‘analogia’ was for
sale at Elmsley’s in London as early as 1778. See on J.D. van Lennep the  paper by G.J. Luhrman (2006). 
3
probably unknown to him, by the Dutch etymologists Schultens, Hemsterhuis, and Lennep”4
(cf. Aarsleff 1967: 62 n.37). Although I do not believe that Schultens was really that obscure in
England at the time, I will not go into that matter now. The question I would to like conclude
with is whether Henry Sweet was enough of a linguistic historiographer to be acquainted with
Cassander’s criticism, and if so, why he kept a silentium doctum with regard to Albert Schultens.  
References
Cassander, I. 1790. Criticisms on The Diversions of Purley. In a letter to Horne Tooke, Esq. London: T.
Cadell. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1990. Table Talk. Recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge (and Johan
Taylor Coleridge). Vol.I. Ed. by Carl Woodring. London: Routledge.
Fellman, Jack. 1978. “Semitic Linguistics and Indo-European Comparative and Historical
Grammar”. Linguistics 206, 51-53.
Funke, Otto. 1934. Englische Sprachphilosophie im späteren 18. Jahrhundert. Bern: A. Francke. 
[17]
Lindström, Therese Å.M. 2002. “Grammaticalisation, Coalescence Theory and Secretion from a
modern perspective”. Paper read at the XIV. Internationales Kolloquium des Studienkreises
Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, Umeå (Sweden), 19 and 20 July 2002. 
—. 2003. “The First, or One of the First, Treatments of grammaticalisation in Britain”. The
Henry Sweet Society Bulletin 40, 10-16. 
Luhrman, G.J. 2006. “Joannes Daniel van Lennep on the Principles of Language. A Chapter in
the History of Pragmatic Rationalist Thought”.  Studies on Humanistic and Rational Grammar  by
G.J. Luhrman.  Ed. by Jan Noordegraaf & Frank Vonk, 43-78.  Amsterdam: Stichting
Neerlandistiek VU & Münster: Nodus Publikationen.
Noordegraaf, Jan. 1995. “The ‘Schola Hemsterhusiana’ Revisited”. History and Rationality. The
Skövde Papers in the Historiography of Linguistics. (= Acta Universitatis Skodvensis. Series
Linguistica, 1.). Ed. by Klaus D. Dutz & Kjell-Åke Forsgren. Münster: Nodus Publikationen
1995, 133-158. (Revised version in The Dutch Pendulum. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1740-1900
by Jan Noordegraaf. Münster: Nodus Publikationen 1996, 23-55).  
—. 1996. “Dutch philologists and general linguistic theory. Anglo-Dutch relationships in the
eighteenth century”. Linguists and Their Diversions. A Festschrift for R.H. Robins on His 75th
Birthday. Ed. by Vivien A. Law & Werner Hüllen. Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 211-243.
MacMahon, Michael K.C. 1996. “Sweet, Henry”. Lexicon Grammaticorum. Who’s Who in the History
of World Linguistics. Ed. by Harro Stammerjohann. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 898-900.  
Robins, Robert H. 1969. A Short History of Linguistics. Second impression. London: Longmans.
—. 1996. “Tooke, John Horne”. Lexicon Grammaticorum. Who’s Who in the History of World
Linguistics. Ed. by Harro Stammerjohann. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 926-927.
4Sweet, Henry. 1920. The History of Language. London: Aldine House J.M. Dent & Sons. (First
edition 1900). 
Tooke, John Horne. 1840. Epea pteroenta or the diversions of Purley. New ed. by Richard Taylor.
London: Tegg. (Originally published vol 1, 1786; vol. 2, 1805).


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VU Research PortalOn Sweet on Horne Tooke. A few remarksNoordegraaf, J.published inBulletin - Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas2003Link to publication in VU Research Portalcitation for published version (APA)Noordegraaf, J. (2003). On Sweet on Horne Tooke. A few remarks. Bulletin - Henry Sweet Society for theHistory of Linguistic Ideas, (41), 14-17.General rightsCopyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright ownersand it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.            • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.            • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain            • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ?Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediatelyand investigate your claim.E-mail address:vuresearchportal.ub@vu.nlDownload date: 21. May. 20211The Henry Sweet Society Bulletin 41 (November 2003), 14-17Jan NoordegraafOn Sweet on Horne Tooke – A few remarksIn an article published in a recent issue of the Bulletin, Therese Lindström showed that HenrySweet (1845-1912) makes an interesting case for those who are interested in the history of thetreatment of ‘grammaticalisation’ in Britain. As it appears, the distinguished name giver of ourSociety made a distinction between ‘full words’ and ‘form words’, i.e., between content wordsand function words, respectively. Lindström (2003: 11) rightly observed that “[s]everal timesSweet mentions that autonomous words can develop into function words – and he claims thatthis was a generally acknowledged process of change at the end of the nineteenth century, inother words taking no credit for having discovered this himself but instead emphasising that it isgenerally accepted – a comment which is important for us today in the study ofgrammaticalisation”. To the interested reader who might wish to know when this concept wasfirst introduced into linguistics, I would like to point to some data which could be taken intoconsideration when writing the history of the phenomenon. When expatiating on the subject in his History of Language (1900) Sweet made ahistoriographical remark which I will quote in full:The older school of philologists regarded form-words as arbitrary inventions made forthe express purpose of showing grammatical relations. One of the earliest and mostenergetic opponents of this view was our countryman Horne Took [sic], whoseDiversions of Purley, first published about 1770, is an attempt to show that evenprepositions and conjunctions once had a definite independent meaning, and aresimply worn-down forms of full-words – a view which is now generally accepted.(Sweet 1920: 43 = Lindström 2003: 12)According to the standard literature, the Diversions appeared only in 1786 (cf. Robins 1996: 926).Evidently, nobody seems to have told Henry Sweet that he had been a bit sloppy concerning theyear of publication; the phrase “about 1770” can still be found in the last edition of his History ofLanguage (1930; cf. Lindström 2003: 12).  More intriguing, however, is Sweet’s assertion that “our countryman” was “one of the earliest[...] to show that even prepositions and conjunctions once had a definite independent meaning,and are simply worn-down forms of full-words”. This view of John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)as an original theorist, however, had been challenged as early as 1790 in a critique of the firstedition of the Diversions, viz. in Cassander’s Criticisms on the Diversions of [15] Purley, a bookletwritten in 1787 and published in 1790 (cf. Funke 1934: 156 n.1; Aarsleff 1967: 61-62 n.37). Cassander was the pseudonym of the Dutchman Johannes Bruckner (1726-1804), who hadbeen born in the village of Cadzand in Zeeland, one of the provinces of the Dutch Republic.According to the Album Studiosorum of Franeker University, he enrolled as Jean Bruckner on 1November 1742. At Franeker, a small town in the province of Friesland, Bruckner studiedtheology. He appears to have moved on to Leiden where he obtained a pastorship and where heassociated with distinguished scholars such as the classicist Tiberius Hemsterhuis (1685-1766),“the greatest Greek scholar of his time” (Monboddo), and the Orientalist Albert Schultens      The year 1737 saw the publication of Schultens’s Hebrew grammar, the Institutiones ad fundamenta1linguae hebraeae, which brought him European fame. It has been claimed that Schultens’s ideas on therelationships between various Semitic languages inspired Sir William Jones (1746-1794) in developing hisown views: Jones’s “eyes were opened to see a similar relation between the Indo-European languages”(Fellman 1978: 52). I think one can hardly doubt that a scholar of Jones’s stature was acquainted withSchultens’s works. Moreover, he knew Schultens’s grandson very well, for Hendrik Albert Schultens(1749-1793), the third member of the ‘Schultens dynasty’ and himself an Arabist and Orientalist of note,had studied at Oxford and Cambridge in 1772, and had held a chair at Leiden from 1779 onwards.        Just one salient example: Betaal (the imperative of betalen, to pay) “is a very common word among the2Dutch; it is generally the first word one hears when one lands any where in their country [...]” (Bruckner1790: 67).        In an article on “Language” in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia.32(1686-1750).  A gifted linguist – it is said that he could deliver a sermon both in Dutch, Latin,1French, and English – , Bruckner became the much-esteemed minister of the Walloon orFrench Church at Norwich in 1753, later also of the local Dutch Church, being the last regularminister of either church. In his Criticisms Bruckner showed himself well-acquainted with the writings of the “verylearned [Albert] Schultens” who “endeavours every where to banish from the theory oflanguages all notions of mystery, all kinds of anomalies [...]” (Cassander 1790: 16-17). Usingmaterial from Dutch  and Frisian he revealed a number of mistakes in Tooke, who had been2“meddling” with words he did not really know – “let me prevail upon you not to be too freewith the Dutch”, was Bruckner’s advice (1790: 74).   A major thrust of Bruckner’s attack, however, lies in the denial of the originality of Tooke'sthesis concerning prepositions and conjunctions. Bruckner, steeped in Hemsterhusian andSchultensian doctrines, did not hesitate to put it in plain words: Professor Schultens was the first philologist who suspected prepositions, conjunctions,particles in general to be no more than nouns and verbs, and refused therefore to makeseparate classes of them, among those that comprehend the parts of speech. But heconfined himself in the application of this truth to the learned languages. You are the firstwho applied it to those which are called modern. It would be wrong not to acknowledge, thatin this you have rendered the literary world an [16] important service. For though youhave not been allowed to proceed far in this career without frequent mistakes, yet yourprogress through it has been sufficiently marked with success to put others uponmaking some further discoveries (Bruckner 1790: 78-79; emphasis added).  Tooke was definitely not amused. As he saw it, Bruckner’s essay contained many a “willfulfalsehood”. Quoting extensively from Schultens’s work Tooke, “a natural rebel” (Robins 1969:155), sought to invalidate Bruckner’s interpretation of Schultens’s work (Tooke 1840: 82 sqq.,129 sqq.). Aarsleff (1967: 61 n.37) concedes that Tooke might well have been influenced by Schultens,although he emphasizes “that the differences are too many to involve simple influence”.Without going further into the matter he referred to another author, James Bonar, whomaintained  that as far as Tooke’s derivation of the particles was concerned, Tooke was “not the3first who struck into that path, similar views having previously been entertained, though       Note that the classical scholar Johannes Daniel van Lennep (1724-1771) was a fellow-student of4Bruckner’s at Franeker. It was argued by Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834) that “[a]ll that is true in his [sc.Tooke’s] book is taken from Lennep, who gave it so much as it was worth, and pretended not to make asystem of it” (7 May 1830; Coleridge 1990: 118). Aarsleff (1967: 61) deems this view to be “hardlycorrect”, arguing that “the main statement of van Lennep’s doctrine” was published only in 1790 byEverardus Scheidius. However, as I have been able to establish, van Lennep’s book on ‘analogia’ was forsale at Elmsley’s in London as early as 1778. See on J.D. van Lennep the  paper by G.J. Luhrman (2006). 3probably unknown to him, by the Dutch etymologists Schultens, Hemsterhuis, and Lennep”4(cf. Aarsleff 1967: 62 n.37). Although I do not believe that Schultens was really that obscure inEngland at the time, I will not go into that matter now. The question I would to like concludewith is whether Henry Sweet was enough of a linguistic historiographer to be acquainted withCassander’s criticism, and if so, why he kept a silentium doctum with regard to Albert Schultens.  ReferencesCassander, I. 1790. Criticisms on The Diversions of Purley. In a letter to Horne Tooke, Esq. London: T.Cadell. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1990. Table Talk. Recorded by Henry Nelson Coleridge (and JohanTaylor Coleridge). Vol.I. Ed. by Carl Woodring. London: Routledge.Fellman, Jack. 1978. “Semitic Linguistics and Indo-European Comparative and HistoricalGrammar”. Linguistics 206, 51-53.Funke, Otto. 1934. Englische Sprachphilosophie im späteren 18. Jahrhundert. Bern: A. Francke. [17]Lindström, Therese Å.M. 2002. “Grammaticalisation, Coalescence Theory and Secretion from amodern perspective”. Paper read at the XIV. Internationales Kolloquium des StudienkreisesGeschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, Umeå (Sweden), 19 and 20 July 2002. —. 2003. “The First, or One of the First, Treatments of grammaticalisation in Britain”. TheHenry Sweet Society Bulletin 40, 10-16. Luhrman, G.J. 2006. “Joannes Daniel van Lennep on the Principles of Language. A Chapter inthe History of Pragmatic Rationalist Thought”.  Studies on Humanistic and Rational Grammar  byG.J. Luhrman.  Ed. by Jan Noordegraaf & Frank Vonk, 43-78.  Amsterdam: StichtingNeerlandistiek VU & Münster: Nodus Publikationen.Noordegraaf, Jan. 1995. “The ‘Schola Hemsterhusiana’ Revisited”. History and Rationality. TheSkövde Papers in the Historiography of Linguistics. (= Acta Universitatis Skodvensis. SeriesLinguistica, 1.). Ed. by Klaus D. Dutz & Kjell-Åke Forsgren. Münster: Nodus Publikationen1995, 133-158. (Revised version in The Dutch Pendulum. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1740-1900by Jan Noordegraaf. Münster: Nodus Publikationen 1996, 23-55).  —. 1996. “Dutch philologists and general linguistic theory. Anglo-Dutch relationships in theeighteenth century”. Linguists and Their Diversions. A Festschrift for R.H. Robins on His 75thBirthday. Ed. by Vivien A. Law & Werner Hüllen. Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 211-243.MacMahon, Michael K.C. 1996. “Sweet, Henry”. Lexicon Grammaticorum. Who’s Who in the Historyof World Linguistics. Ed. by Harro Stammerjohann. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 898-900.  Robins, Robert H. 1969. A Short History of Linguistics. Second impression. London: Longmans.—. 1996. “Tooke, John Horne”. Lexicon Grammaticorum. Who’s Who in the History of WorldLinguistics. Ed. by Harro Stammerjohann. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 926-927.4Sweet, Henry. 1920. The History of Language. London: Aldine House J.M. Dent & Sons. (Firstedition 1900). Tooke, John Horne. 1840. Epea pteroenta or the diversions of Purley. New ed. by Richard Taylor.London: Tegg. (Originally published vol 1, 1786; vol. 2, 1805).

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